Taprooms and Temples: Beer, Buddhism and Tourism in China

Sipping a beer at the Tsingtao Brewery, two facts came to mind: China produces twice as much beer as the second-place United States, and it is home to twice as many Buddhists as the next country, Thailand. Neither beer nor Buddhism is native to China, but both have thrived and become essential aspects of the Chinese identity. A closer look at both also shows why Americans and Chinese so often misunderstand one another.

A research trip to temples and monasteries in China and Hong Kong brought to mind this juxtaposition of beer and Buddhism. It took me to Qingdao (Tsingtao by an older spelling), and I was on a break from research at the city’s municipal archive and Zhanshan Temple for some sightseeing.

According to hotel-rack brochures, the obvious tourist destination was the city’s brewery, which retains the old Tsingtao spelling. Founded by German and British colonists in 1903, the original building is now a museum, complete with taproom. Perfect, I thought: a little history, local color and a fresh beer waiting at the end.

So on a rainy summer day, I made my way to the Tsingtao Brewery and Museum. A taxi dropped me two blocks from the entrance because the street was torn up for construction. After dodging sewer trenches, puddles and building equipment, I arrived, muddy and wet, at the glass entryway to the visitors’ center and joined a Japanese tour group. Several security guards and docents were quick to share with me their feelings about the visitors from Tokyo: Japan, in their view, had been unjustly rewarded for its mid-twentieth century brutality and aggression by becoming rich. Worse, they considered Japanese tourists to be unapologetic and condescending.

The Tsingtao Brewery reflects a complex story of foreign influence: founded by colonizing Europeans, it fell into Japanese hands during the First World War. The city was reoccupied by Japan in the 1930s, then by American marines in 1945. The brewery survived the communist victory of 1949 despite its awkward history as a foreign product made to satisfy colonial tastes and owned for decades by occupying, imperial powers. In 1954, then state owned, Tsingtao began exporting. As China’s best-selling beer, it has become ubiquitous in Chinese restaurants in more than sixty countries. Today, as a local resident proclaimed to the China Daily, one “cannot be a real Qingdao person without beer.”

Both the brewery’s complex history and the staff’s anti-Japanese sentiments were buried beneath a more urgent message of consumerism. Copper brewing vessels and vintage advertisements celebrated the beer’s cosmopolitan past with little reference to, and no judgment on, the foreigners who had founded and sustained it. That fits the ruling party’s promotion of economic growth, hoping a contented people will never challenge its political domination.

Across town, however, I found a different perspective on the local German role. At the site of WWI German fortifications, a separate museum told a story of oppression: strident anti-imperialist rhetoric accompanied caricatured mannequins of German soldiers. These weren’t at all like the Germans depicted back at the brewery in subdued, life-sized paintings, rubbing elbows with amiable European neighbors. Rather, they were the “foreign devils” the regime blames so often for China’s troubles during the past century or two.

By the time my brewery tour ended at the combination gift shop and taproom, the weather had turned for the worse. Encouraged by torrential rain, I took a seat in the bierstube to sample its products. (I particularly recommend the dark lager, produced only for local consumption.)

Most other visitors were Japanese. The bartender said this was typical—Japanese bus tours were the lifeblood of the museum, though the number of Chinese visitors was increasing. As each tour group emerged into the bierstube, a ritual recurred: groups of travelers marked their tables with camera bags, raincoats and umbrellas. A member or two collected their vouchers, redeemed them for glasses of beer and distributed them to cheers, giggles or nervous smiles. About half the beer went unconsumed.

There also were a few Australian, American and European tourists, and with them the pattern changed. Other groups stopped and stared, carefully observing how these (presumably knowledgeable) beer drinkers approached their brew. It didn’t matter if the drinkers were college-age backpackers from Sydney or middle-aged Brits on a package tour; they were presumed to have authentic knowledge about beer. When a young German couple sat down, word spread quickly, and they held court for nearly an hour, sharing opinions on Tsingtao, both the city and its beer. I guessed they wouldn’t get a similar welcome at the bunker museum across town.

Also different at the bunker museum was my conversation with the ticket-taker, an older woman dressed in drab clothing of the late Mao era. She described those early Germans in stock phrases about foreign devils, feudalism and the “carving of the melon”—a euphemism for how European imperialists divided up China in the nineteenth century. At the brewery, in contrast, the bartender was a stylish young woman who spoke excellent English and would not revert to her native language though I stayed with Chinese.